


The Plush Problem

by NeverKnightfire



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Alastor is Bad at Feelings (Hazbin Hotel), Alastor is a dumbass, Denial of Feelings, Feelings Realization, Husk is So Done (Hazbin Hotel), Idiots in Love, M/M, chaos comes in small packages, with arts and crafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 11:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverKnightfire/pseuds/NeverKnightfire
Summary: Alastor did not have a problem.
Relationships: Alastor/Husk (Hazbin Hotel)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 63





	The Plush Problem

**Author's Note:**

> With no small debt of gratitude to AwesomeInTheory, who brainstormed a ton of this (one shot?) idea with me

Alastor did _not_ have a problem.

The small plush doll sitting on the stained surface of his wooden workbench stared blankly ahead, button eyes shiny and unblinking against the dull white surface of its fabric fur. 

It was mocking him. He was almost certain of it. 

The doll was nothing special as the sum of its construction. Some secondhand fabric, thread, button eyes and kapok stuffing were the main materials used. It was all completely and utterly mundane. 

A standard-issue item that could arguably be called a "voodoo doll" thanks to the whims of popular culture. A few tufts of sooty fur were in the doll's head, along with a small bright red feather collected from the disobedient owner's last molt and a thin sliver of one of the sharp implements- strange hybrids of talon and claw- that made up the extensions of Husker’s fingers. 

Alastor glared at the doll. It stared resolutely back. He could almost hear the cat demon's gruff, gravelly voice when he looked upon the thing. 

"Go on then, do it ya bastard," the chimera's lazy voice complained on an imaginary frequency in Alastor's head. "Make me do your stupid shit if ya can. I ain't cleanin' out yer damned boneyard, no matter what bullshit magic garbage ya try!" 

The Radio Demon paced back over to pick the plush toy up, snarling in its unimpressed face until he collected himself with a huff. It was not talking to him. He was not being mocked by an implement of his own making. He did not have a problem. 

He tossed the tiny doll into the air, considering as it landed once again in his palm. It was something about the doll. That had to be where the issue lay, but where was the problem located? The items he'd sewn inside could only be blameless, so it must be the doll itself. 

The weight of the thing was satisfying, not quite solid but with a heft that made it feel substantial. The button eyes were shiny and bright, gleaming with a yellow ochre hue that was very reminiscent of the real thing. 

The pattern was a bit rough- not his best work, if he were being completely honest. The material of the doll itself was a mishmash of scavenged bits and pieces that he'd had on hand; a patchwork collection of different scraps and fabrics, and altogether it made for a rather... lackluster presentation. 

Yes, it was the materials. That had to be the issue that was making his little project feel so lacking. A little spark stoked inside of him at the thought, and he dropped the item back onto his workbench beside the sewing kit. 

It made sense why he felt so unfulfilled by the implement. Why, of course he wouldn't be able to properly control Husk with such a shoddy representation. He'd gotten lazy in his workmanship, tossing together just any sort of faded cloth bits. He needed to take greater care when making the tools to ensure the compliance of his underlings. 

He could do better. In fact, he would do better. With a grim smirk at the blankly-staring gaze of the doll slumped on the table, Alastor vanished in a swirl of dancing magical sigils. 

It wasn't right. It still, somehow, wasn't right. The spark of inspiration had kindled to a thin flame of discontent.

Alastor glared in unamused judgement at the little doll sitting on the table beside the first one. This one's fabrics were a softer material with a suede-like feel, the colors unfaded by age or previous use. Its floppy red wings fell in a lazy sway from its back, little stitched-on suit-markings spangling the lines of the appendages. 

There was nothing wrong with the materials, per se, but it still wasn't right. He'd known it before he had even completed the dreary little thing, and had not bothered to retrieve the shards of Husk's being that he'd left in the original doll. 

"I suppose that you're also dissatisfied with the fabrics," he complained to the little thing, baring his teeth at the unblinking button eyes. "You believe that you deserve a better representation of Husk's fur quality? Perhaps you think that scruffy-looking hair is a finer grade of material?" The doll stared at him in mute judgement, and he scoffed. 

"This is an insult to my professionalism and ability," he complained as he began to pace the reedy marshland-covered floor of his hotel room. He picked up the new doll, lifting it up over his shoulder in preparation to throw into the wilds of the gator-infested waters beyond the wardrobe. 

He blinked, lowering the doll back to eye level. "Stuff and nonsense," he muttered, tossing it back onto the desk with a careless shrug. 

If he vanished a moment later and beset the resident bartender with merciless teasing caresses to judge the plush qualities of his pelt, well that was his business. It was absolutely not a problem. It was research. The thin flame set down hot coals within Alastor’s psyche, burning in earnest now.

The bolts of new material were soft and silky, plush with just the right pile to crumple agreeably under the curl of Alastor's fingers. It had been expensive, but it would be worth it if he was to create a flawless effigy of his snide underling and quench the burning _something_ that licked at his soul from within. 

Yes, the compulsions to obey the Radio Demon's every whim with flawless compliance would be all the stronger for the doll's more perfect likeness, he told himself. Scissors slashed, needle and thread flashed and lashed and pulled taut the boundaries of his newest creation around the certainties of his success. 

Seized with a sparkle of inspiration, he gave his newest creation a wide, manic grin just like the one he was going to insist upon Husk donning in his new, obedient state. It would be perfect, there would be no more issues with subpar textiles. Shortly, Husk and his poor attitude would cease to be a problem. 

It wasn't right. From above the broad, toothy grin, the orange-yellow button eyes seemed amused by his failure. "Can't even get my face right, can ya Al?" the doll seemed to laugh in Husk's tired drawl. "I wonder if ya ever even noticed what my face looks like!" 

The scissors rose again, plunging into a new span of the prized textiles spread across the bed. A new copy of the doll soon joined the previous effort, alike in every way except for the profoundly grumpy glower on its fuzzy face. It was still wrong. 

A third duplicate soon found itself stitched into being by Alastor’s fingers, this time with a lopsided, skeptical frown on its face. This one, this one was the worst of all as it gazed up at him in frank confusion and perhaps even a little concern. 

“What the hell’s going on with you, Al?” Husk’s voice came again to Alastor’s mind. “This ain’t like you. Why’re you having such a hard time with a simple doll?” 

Alastor flung the doll back to the workbench, nearly upsetting the abandoned coffee cup that he’d left there. The stuffed doll tumbled away in a flutter of fabric wings to join its siblings, and a shout of frustration erupted from Alastor’s lips. The burning coals were singing his senses, threatening to ignite him in earnest.

This would not do. He must be missing some crucial detail, some obvious intrinsic quality that was robbing his creation of the vital essence that he was trying to bring under his merciless thumb. 

He vanished to the lobby, where he provoked the cat demon until Husk was on his feet, a snarling beast of bared teeth and flared wings, threatening to take on his fully-demonic transformation. 

As soon as the chimera had unwittingly obliged his need for study, Alastor set his shadows on the stunned demon, their many keen eyes noting measurements, studying the angles of the complex shapes that composed him in a matter of seconds. That done, Alastor returned to his room, seizing his implements again. 

This time would be different. This time he would capture the very essence of Husk in a vessel. There was not a problem. There was only the delay of his success, and attaining it would be all the sweeter for having been hard-won.

He’d almost forgotten now what the original reason for needing the item was. Husk’s terse refusal to tidy Alastor’s delightfully morbid rock garden had fallen by the wayside. All of it had almost ceased to be in the face of the need to capture the grouchy demon’s intriguing presence in cloth and thread before Alastor was burned not-quite-alive by the compulsion.

Three more dolls. Three more failures. Three more tiny pairs of eyes that gazed up at him from the work table in silent judgment. Alastor grabbed the lot up and carried them to his bed, dropping them onto the surface with a growl. There were too many of the blasted things now to leave on his work surface, which had been taken over by a series of empty coffee cups that seemed to multiply as quickly as the plush dolls had. 

“What is it?” He demanded, picking up his good fabric shears and slicing the things through the air as if he intended to slay his own failure with them, or perhaps cut a fire line across the boundaries of his soul to save what had not yet been ignited by these strange, soft monsters. “Why are none of you _right?_ ” 

“Oh damn,” the grinning plushie muttered. “He’s talking to us now.” 

“Shit,” the one with the doubtful frown replied. “So this is what it takes to send ol’ Al ‘round the bend- soft toys and button eyes. No wonder Vox never managed to take the bastard down.” 

“You’ll all kindly be quiet!” Alastor roared at the stuffed assembly, rounding on them with the shears and pointing at each of the things in turn. Had he sat them all up in clustered row on the bed? He honestly couldn’t remember doing so, but the dolls had certainly not done it on their own. 

“Maybe you should call it good enough, huh boss?” The first doll, the workmanlike conglomeration of patchwork, seemed to be the most sympathetic of the lot. 

The second doll piped up at that. “Yeah! Tell ol’ sourpuss to tend to your garden or else. Show any one of us to him, and he’ll probably hop to it just outta being creeped the fuck out.” 

“It’s not about needing him in your private sanctum anymore though, is it?” The grinning doll was laughing now, and Alastor plunged the long-bladed scissors into the bed in threat. The doll cackled, unimpressed. “You need _more_ now, don’t you? Yeah, it can’t just be a workable tool, it’s gotta be a perfect likeness! Soft fur, big round eyes, ears so carefully shaped…” 

Alastor seized up the laughing plush toy and slammed it onto the work bench surface, sending empty cups clattering into a broken pile of china shards in the swampy floor. The doll grinned up at him even as Alastor’s claw like nails sank into the fine, soft fabric of its body. 

“You want better than this, don’t ya, boss? More realistic?”

He flung the thing across the room with a furious cry, ignoring how the other doll’s voices chorused in concern. Alastor vanished from the room, his thoughts a tempestuous whirlwind of confusion and his soul a raging fireball.

Few things made a demon Overlord in a sour mood brighten faster than the sight of a poor, foolish soul eager to make a deal. Alastor was absolutely not an exception to this rule in the slightest. 

The demon who found himself before the grinning Radio Demon was an odd sort, a strange chimeric blend of traits that combined a long, weasel-like body and the agile limbs of a spider monkey. The head was reptilian in shape, but covered in the same long, soft light green fur. 

A collection of sewing needles made of metal and bone lined the cuffs of the long-sleeved jacket the demon was wearing, and a seemingly infinite number of spools of thread clattered from his pockets to the ground as he shivered before Alastor.

“You sew,” Alastor announced, observing the poor soul as it flinched from his scrutiny. At the silent nod of agreement, the Radio Demon’s smile stretched unnaturally wide. “Perhaps I shall indeed be interested in making a deal. An exchange, hmmmmm? If your work pleases me, you’ll be well-rewarded. If I’m displeased… _well, let’s ensure that I’m not displeased, understood?”_

The deal was struck. Alastor’s magical hoard grew by another reluctant soul. Fifteen reference photos and several threats later, his collection of stuffed Huskers had increased twofold. 

But still, none of them were **right**.

It was no fault of the construction, nor the materials used. The likeness was well-made in comparison to the photos, and there was nothing that Alastor could point to and say “That. That is the reason that this is unsatisfactory.” The fireball had reduced his other thoughts to cinders, it was now a fully-involved conflagration that had consumed him.

He returned to the Landing Grounds that same day, and began to search out newly-Fallen artisans, exchanging Deals for dolls at a rate that would have alarmed anyone who’d managed to hear of such things. The number of the plush Husks almost seemed to double every day, their sizes ranging from palm-sized to nearly half the real Husk’s height. 

But yet, none of them were RIGHT and he could feel their wrongness reducing some vital, unknown part of him to ashes.

He could not part with them, they were all pieces of the puzzle, keys that would somehow combine to open up the gate concealing the divine knowledge that would eventually bless him with its ownership. The more dolls that he possessed, the more that the nagging _something_ scratched and burned at the inside of his soul. He needed to solve this mystery. He needed it like he’d needed nothing before. 

The dolls had surpassed the ability of his hotel room to contain them, and he’d finally been compelled to shove the majority of the things into the enchanted Otherspace-containment of his wardrobe. The wooden walls of the thing creaked with the strain of holding the many plush toys that he’d been able to cram inside, but that was a trivial concern in the face of the issue at hand. 

A fresh multitude of plush winged cats now covered almost every surface in Alastor’s room. The bed was lost in a pile of cuddly soft toys. The floor was scattered with them, the swampy bayou having receded in respect for his pursuit of perfection. Tiny unblinking eyes gazed up at Alastor every moment that he spent in his room, teasing him with their unsatisfactory states of being. Every one was both better in execution and worse at satiating his strange desire than the last. 

Perhaps the reason the purchased dolls made his strange appetite worse was the fact that they had not been crafted by his own hands? The ones he himself had stitched together had not grated on his desires so. 

Well, it was not a problem. He had plenty of the new ones to study upon and perhaps learn how to improve his own crafting. The embroidered face of the latest doll drew him, and he picked the thing up to consider its resigned face. 

“You’re ignorant as fuck,” the thing announced in his head, and he tossed it back into the pile that had once constituted the bed. What an unpleasant little fabric beastie. The soft threads of the face though… perhaps that was what his own efforts had been lacking?

There was a knock at the door, and the Radio Demon startled. Niffty’s voice called out, reminding him to drop his bed linens outside in the morning for a freshly-laundered set. Even as he called back his assurances that he would comply, Alastor eyed the plushie pile that concealed his furniture doubtfully. Was there even a need to change the sheets when he barely used the bed in the first place? What about now when he found himself dozing in soft clouds of plush winged cats? 

No matter. It wasn’t a problem. Alastor’s shadows sprang into existence, excavating his lost furniture in pursuit of the old bed linens. Alastor himself shoved an assortment of stuffed dolls off of the wheeled wooden chair waiting before his work bench. Seated and newly confident in his pursuits, Alastor reached for his scissors again. He worked long into the night, forgetting everything in pursuit of his goal. 

Charlie frowned at the expression on Husk’s face. The cat demon’s usual apathic glare had been replaced by a terse, bitter expression. “I’m telling ya, I ain’t seen the dumbass,” Husk repeated, throwing back another long drink from the bottle in his clawed hands. 

“But Husk, just two days ago you were telling me that he wouldn’t leave you alone!” Charlie objected, earning a whiskey-scented growl in reply. 

“Yeah, the whole fucking day, he was pestering me like a tailor with a quota! But today? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. And good riddance, I say! The fucking menace is about to get my fist in his face, contract or no.” 

“Well, no one else has seen him for a month,” Charlie replied, and Husk shrugged. 

“Like I said, good riddance after all that. Whatever the fuck that jackass is up to, I guarantee you it’s going to be both no damned good and also a pain in my goddamned ass. The piece of shit never wants to see me for anything but annoying the fuck outta me, anyway.” 

Niffty trotted down the stairs, carrying a stack of laundry baskets taller than she was with ease. She called out a cheerful greeting to Husk and Charlie as she passed, not minding at all the gruff growl she got out of the cat demon in reply. 

Laundry day always seemed to put an extra skip in the little cyclops’ step. Something about the smell of fabric softener and freshly-folded linen brought her typical positive attitude to an even greater height. 

Upstairs, Alastor stirred. He’d fallen asleep in a mountain of tiny Husker-clones, the fruits of his long night of labor. One of the items remained clutched in his hands, and he raised it to his bleary eyes, only to feel something seize painfully at the place in his prickling soul where his heart had once been. He didn’t even remember making this last doll.

Tiny perfect threads made the doll’s face, each stitch precise and flawless. There was something about the shape of the eyes, or perhaps it was the gleaming hues of the golden thread that gave the little plush toy’s gaze such a soft, gentle presence. It was a searching expression, a warm, kindling familiarity…

“Did ya find me yet, Al?” It asked quietly, the voice almost bashful in his mind. 

Alastor dropped the thing with a screech, struggling free of the sea of its clinging relatives to get to his feet again. The doll landed atop the others, somehow landing face up to continue giving him that soulful look. 

“Alastor?” Charlie’s voice was coming from down the hallway, strangely loud. 

He stumbled away from the searching eyes of the doll, turning towards the door of his room. With horror, he realized that it was cracked open, a trail of discarded Husk plushies leading to the ajar portal. A cold dread seized him then, and he stretched out his senses, feeling for each and every one of the toys that had come into his possession. 

One was missing. One was missing, and this was a HUGE problem. He grabbed the large doll on the floor beside him, letting out a scream of horror mixed with radio interference into it’s soft chest. 

“Al? You okay in there?” Charlie called again. The door trembled as she rapped on it. 

Alastor’s shadow servant appeared beside him, unzipping the wall like a jacket so that a multitude of minions could attempt to shove the rest of the dolls inside. 

“CHARLIE MY DEAR!” Alastor cried, quickly stepping outside and pulling the door closed behind him with what was not at all an over-loud slam. “WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?” 

“Start by taking it down to an eleven.” 

Alastor found himself staring at the real Husk, who was lingering behind Charlie in the hallway. His every inch emanated a clear reluctance to be there. The cat demon’s expression was nothing like the gentle, almost loving expression on the doll Alastor had awakened with. The real thing was annoyed, grouchy… and yet…

And yet- somewhere in those molten depths, did Alastor detect the faintest bit of gentle warmth? Some lingering, hesitant fondness in his exasperation? 

“Alastor, what the SHIT?!” 

Husk was pressed against the wall across from Alastor’s hotel door, the look of irritation gone and one of shock in its place. Alastor was leaning into the chimera’s face, his nose mere inches from Husker’s own as he came back to himself. 

“NOTHING!” He heard himself announce, voice crackling with static as he recoiled from the other demons, cueing up a laugh track and thunderous applause as he bowed away from their stunned expressions with another over-loud announcement. “I JUST REMEMBERED I HAVE URGENT BUSINESS TO ATTEND!” 

No sooner had the Radio Demon vanished than there was a noise like at least three walls and a ceiling giving way from behind the Radio Demon’s closed door. 

“The fuck?” Husk breathed, “The fuck was THAT?” 

“Rats in the walls?” Charlie guessed, frowning at Alastor’s locked door. 

“There are no cats in the walls, my dear! Nonsense!” Alastor’s voice announced from the old fashioned tabletop radio that had sprouted into being beside them. “Absolute blatherskite! Nonsense! Ha! Now do be on your way, won’t you?” 

“Something’s weird as shit around here,” Husk grumbled, crossing his arms. “You just wait and see, that idiot is up to something and it’s going to come crashing down on all our heads.” 

The walls of the hotel creaked and groaned in response as Charlie shrugged. 

Alastor frantically zapped through the hotel, desperately in pursuit of the fast-moving presence of the missing member of his herd. 

Herd? Was a group of cats a herd? No, it was a cloud... a chowder? A clowder? Was clowder a word? Who came up with such a bizarre nomenclature for- Wait! Why the hell was he thinking about this when one of his precious secret magic implements was missing?!

With every jump ahead, he was getting closer, slowing gaining ground on Niffty's frenetic pace as she zipped through the hotel on her rounds. Surely, she would drop her load at the laundry room soon and- WHY was she heading back upstairs again?! 

On his next jump through the walls of the hotel, Alastor saw the flash of her bright fuchsia poodle skirt around the corner of the landing. With a superhuman effort, Alastor sprang into motion, his long legs carrying him after the fast-moving demoness in a series of quick bounds. How was she so fast with such a short stride?

"NIFFTY MY DEAR!" he shouted as he surged around the corner, tripping over a crease in the worn carpet there and nearly taking a tumble down the landing. "A MOMENT!" 

Niffty paused midstride, blinking her one great eye up at him in eager delight as he caught up with her. "Hiya, Alastor! How're you doing this morning? It's a beautiful morning, isn't it? It's just lovely today!" 

Before he could answer or attempt to formulate a clever way to steal away the many wicker baskets of fresh laundry from her iron grip, she was in motion again and plunging onward with the conversation as if he'd already answered. As she spoke, she was collecting sets of bed clothes and setting them on a freshly re-cleaned spot on the floor outside of every occupied room. 

"I’m so sorry to make you wait! I’ll have your new linens up in just a minute. I'm almost done with this floor! It's taking me a little longer than usual this morning because I've got a lost item that I'm having to track down the owner of!" 

Alright, this wasn't a problem. Niffty had found his missing doll, and he could simply ask for its return and her kind discretion…

"So far though, no one's recognized it!" 

This wasn't a problem. He would simply have to murder an inconvenient individual or two...

"I asked Baxter and Crymini and Mimzy and Canna and Georgie and..." 

Niffty's voice faded out as static filled Alastor's ears. A blank-eyed grin was on his face as he nodded along with the ever-growing list of names. How was he going to explain to Charlie that more than half the population of the hotel had come down with a sudden and irreversible case of complete and utter death? If it was closer to the Extermination Day, then perhaps he could have blamed it on the angels, but-! 

"...-fi and Samandra and Foxxre and Finneas and Hallo and Wan-...

He was going to have to level the whole place. The entire building, occupants and all, needed come down immediately. His dear business partner was going to be so incredibly displeased with him once it came out that the impending unnatural disaster was all Alastor's doing. He wondered if she'd have Lucifer smite him personally. The walls of the place were creaking oddly, it was in a horrible state of disrepair... perhaps he could claim ignorance of the event if he was sly about how he worded himself...?

"And it's really taking a chunk out of my day!" Niffty announced, stomping her foot in a childish display of frustration. "I wonder if it's not Husk's though, because it's just such a cute little doll and it looks just like him!" She turned to sift through her baskets, and Alastor sprang into action. He seized the lot and quickly sorted through the piles of laundry inside as he tutted assurances to Niffty that he would take on the task of finding the erstwhile owner of the toy she had found. 

Aha! He gave a genuine grin of success as his fingers closed around a soft plush limb. His wayward little kitten had been found at last! He pulled the doll from the depths of the bedclothes with a suitable fluorish. There was absolutely no way that he could allow Husk to see the-

"AGH!" he yelped with a squeal of feedback. The plush doll he'd turned to face had a look of accusatory surprise as an expression that he had been thoroughly unprepared for. 

"Isn't it cute?" Niffty squealed, plucking up her baskets and stacking them again in an order that presumably made some kind of sense to her. Alastor did his best to tune out the angry tirade in his head that the doll was shouting at him. 

He was absolutely not a stupid bastard, and he was going to wash out this horrible little monster's mouth with soap as soon as he got it safely back to his room!

“You goddamned son of a bitch”, the doll yowled, continuing its reign of vocal terror inside the walls of Alastor’s mind.

No, soap was too good for it. It had just uttered a remark that merited death.

"Yes, well no need to worry anymore! I shall return this quaint little thing to its home post-haste!" Alastor teleported himself to the hotel lawn, where he fully intended to incinerate this vicious little stuffed gremlin and its' foul language in an inferno that would make the one searing his insides look like the tepid glow of a cigarette lighter. 

"...letting yer damned shadow shits get me into that mess in the first place!" the doll raged, and Alastor couldn't help but snicker at the thing's impotent dolly fury. It really was an excellent likeness of Husker, wasn't it? Not as... startling as the one that he'd awakened to this morning, but a very valiant effort at preserving the likeness of his dear (if curmudgeonly) friend. And it did look so very soft.

He stole a quick glance around to assure himself that no one was in the vicinity before squeezing the angry little thing against his chest. It squashed so thrillingly in his arms, soft and pliant and so very, very furious. He fancied that the hellscape shivered a little at the feeling. 

Behind Alastor, the hotel trembled and shook before billions upon billions of plush cat dolls began spilling from every crevice. They poured from the smokestack of the cruise ship in the building's side, they tumbled from the broken window of the tower, and gushed from the balcony like a great fuzzy flood of cuddly kitty doom. Ignorant to the carnage, and Vagatha's distant scream of rage, Alastor regarded the little doll in his hands. 

The burning within him was not quelled, but it had quieted somewhat. A bonfire now instead of an out-of-control inferno. He had time at last to figure out what he needed to conquer the feeling before it once again became a burning vortex cindering his soul to nothingness. "I don't have a problem," he confidently informed the doll. 

"Shows what you know, dumbass!" the plushie retorted just before a heavy hand fell on Alator's shoulder. Husker- the real one this time, was standing next to him, holding the little doll with the great, searching eyes. 

"You got something you need to tell me, Al?" the chimera asked, something amused and embarrassed and warm dancing in his burning gaze. 

Oh... Oh! Alastor startled at the sight.

_There it was._


End file.
